Wikipedia is where most people start when they Google something about adoption. Its articles on adoption are read by prospective parents, students, journalists, legislative staff, and adopted people looking for their own context and history. Many of those articles are disorganized, out of date, or missing context that would make them genuinely useful.
Our Edit-a-Thon is a volunteer effort to fix that, one sentence, one, paragraph and one article at a time. The next one is November 1, 2026. Here’s our plan for this one, and likely edit-a-thons after it.
How it works
Most edit-a-thons gather people for a few hours to improve whatever articles interest them. We’re trying something a little different, for a couple of reasons.
Concentrating on a single Wikipedia article. Rather than making small improvements across a dozen pages, we pick one and work on it until it is better. A visibly improved article is worth more than small changes spread around the internet.
Breaking our work into smaller pieces. “Help improve this article” asks for a volunteer to absorb thousands of words and years of editing history before they can do anything useful. Instead we divide the article into defined pieces—a history section, legal framework, statistics—each enough for one person (or two people if you want a friend along to help). You pick the piece that fits your interest and the time that you have to spend on it. You don’t need to understand the whole article to contribute something more focused and meaningful.
Volunteers work at their own pace rather than in a single concentrated session, and every package gets a second volunteer’s review before anything goes live.
Current Article Focus: Adoption in the United States
The article, “Adoption in the United States” is one of the top-read adoption-related pages on Wikipedia. But it’s in rough shape. Statistics are scattered across different sections and don’t always agree. There is no history section at all. The section on federal legislation covers a single bill from 2014. Several portions read like personal essays rather than factually supported entries, and major subjects—the Indian Child Welfare Act, the citizenship status of intercountry adoptees, fraud in intercountry adoption—are missing or hardly mentioned.
We’re proposing a new structure, broken up into into about fifteen different pieces, which we’re calling “packages.”
The Packages (and what they cover)
| Package | Description | |
| A – Restructure (not a rewrite) | Rearrange existing text into a more sensible order. No textual changes are made. Completed first before editing | |
| B – History to 1945 | The 1851 Massachusetts statute, orphan trains, early confidentiality laws, early agencies and scandals. | |
| C – History 1945 to present | Baby Scoop Era, postwar intercountry adoption, the Indian Adoption Project, the shift toward openness, the decline of intercountry adoption | |
| D – State law and eligibility | Consent, termination of parental rights, putative fathers, interstate placement, legal impacts, safe haven laws, who may adopt | |
| E – Federal child welfare law | From the 1980 Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act through Family First, including ICWA and the Multiethnic Placement Act | |
| F – Intercountry adoption, immigration, citizenship | Intercountry adoption, immigration, citizenship — Visa pathways, the Hague Convention, accreditation, the Child Citizenship Act and the citizenship gap | |
| G – Domestic adoption types | Stepparent, relative, foster care, private agency, independent, facilitators, adult adoption | |
| H – Statistics | Consolidate all figures into one section, re-source the data tables, update to the latest fiscal or calendar year, whichever is reported | |
| I – Costs and finances | Update the tax credit and adoption assistance material, remove consumer-guide content | |
| J – Records, openness, and search | Original birth certificate issues, open adoption, contact agreements, registries, DNA testing. | |
| K – Research on outcomes and experiences | Research on adopted people, birth parents, and adoptive parents | |
| L – Transracial adoption and Native children | Rework the existing section and add ICWA context | |
| M – Custody transfer and intercountry ethics | Rewrite the “rehoming” section from sources; add fraud and trafficking cases | |
| N – Advocacy movements and further reading | Adoptee, birth parent, and other organizations | |
| O – Lead section and final review | Rewrite the article’s introduction to summarize the finished article |
Package “A” happens first. Package “O” is the last step. Everything in between does not depend on a particular order.
Signing Up
Claim a package using this form. Please sign up for only one at a time—you can take another when you’ve finished.
Before the first session you’ll also need a Wikipedia account. If you don’t have one, register now and make ten small edits somewhere low-stakes, such as fixing typos. Wikipedia requires four days and ten edits before an account can do everything we’ll need, and the practice helps. We will also be sharing a tracking dashboard and our Slack discussion space, where volunteers can ask questions and coordinate editing.
You do not need prior Wikipedia editing experience. Several of our volunteers are learning as they go, and experienced editors are available to help.
How We Work
Every edit needs to cite a reliable source. Our edits must take into account multiple perspectives, including adopted people, birth parents, adoptive parents, agencies, and researchers, in proportion to how reliable sources cover them. Structural changes are proposed on the article’s talk page before they’re made, so other volunteer Wikipedia editors can weigh in.
Participants are volunteers and should have no conflict of interest in the subjects they edit.